Chapter 1

My daughter Sylvia’s boyfriend, Gareth Mitchell, was a regular visitor to our home. At times it almost seemed he lived here, but I had no objections. He was a good lad at heart, though occasionally prone to bursts of off-the-wall behaviour. But he was one of those young men – almost rare these days – who looked out for other people and was not slow in helping where he saw a need. I have to admit he was not noted for his looks, and he was only middling in height. But his character shone through in a way that more than made up for those deficiencies. To give Sylvia credit, she saw past the surface and treasured Gareth’s inner qualities. In fact, it was obvious she was smitten with him, and he with her. So it was no surprise that Gareth called me one Saturday and asked if he could come and have a talk. It took little divination to guess what the subject of the talk would be. It sounds so old-fashioned, but I appreciated hugely the respect he was paying me.

“Come on in, Gareth, you don’t really need to knock – you’re almost family here. And I suspect you’re hoping to become a true family member.”

“Is it that obvious, Mr Nolan?” he said.

“You could say that,” I laughed. “You can cut to the chase. I’m not going to ask you to go through the whole rigmarole. If you’re asking to marry Sylvia, you have my full blessing. If you have something else in mind...”

“No, no,” he blurted out. “I love her, and it seems we’re of very like mind. She’s already said yes, and I just wanted to make sure that’s okay with you.”

“Perfectly okay, Gareth. Do I presume that my daughter is hovering nearby hoping she doesn’t have to pick up the pieces?” He almost looked sheepish for a moment, and I grinned.

“You can come in, Sylvia,” I called. “You don’t have to eavesdrop.”

The door burst open and my daughter flew across the room to hug her new fiancé.

“Thank you, Daddy,” she cried, giving Gareth a long and passionate kiss.

“Hrrmph,” I said sternly. “Break!” Then couldn’t contain my laughter. “Well, my two lovebirds, you certainly have my blessing. It will be good to expand the family.”

Suddenly I sobered. “It’s been diminished for too long.” And I came close to breaking down. Seeing my change in demeanour, Sylvia rushed across and threw her arms around me.

“Daddy, I know you miss mum terribly, and I do too. But...”

“It’s okay, honey,” I cut in. “Life goes on. And I’m really pleased for you both.” The group of us moved across to the sofa to discuss where to from here.

(It occurred to me afterwards that children seldom appreciate how complicated their parents’ emotions can be. Gareth had every right to be excited. Sylvia had every reason to glow with happiness. Yet for me, the news was strangely mixed. I was delighted for them, of course, but weddings have a habit of opening doors in the memory that one had quietly persuaded oneself were permanently closed.

Lori had loved weddings. She claimed they were the one occasion when people became their best selves, at least for a day. She always cried during the vows, even at weddings where she barely knew the bride. I used to tease her about carrying tissues in anticipation, and she’d insist she had hay fever. It became one of our standing jokes. I found myself wondering, not for the first time, what she would have made of Gareth. She would have approved, I felt certain. Lori had an instinct for people that was rarely wrong.)

This is the point where I fill in some of the background. I’m Gerald Nolan, now pushing 53, a graphic designer. I met my wife, Lori, when we were both studying at university. Our relationship had a somewhat rocky start when we locked horns on opposite teams in the debating club. It took many months for us to realise that relationship was more important than ideology or politics. Once we passed that hurdle, our romance blossomed quickly, and we married after graduating at 23 (our birthdays were only a couple of months apart).

We lived somewhat hand-to-mouth in the early days, but with both of us working initially, we scraped by. Our flat in a low-economic part of the city was furnished entirely with second-hand furniture and we haunted the opportunity shops for clothes. The only item we refused to get second-hand was the bed, knowing that a bad mattress was not conducive to a good night’s rest (or to vigorous pre-sleep activities). We felt doubly blessed when Sylvia arrived two years later. Lori gave up work to become a full-time mum, and coincidentally I started in a new job. The increased salary didn’t quite make up the loss of Lori’s income, but somehow or other we made do, our new daughter more than compensating.

Over the next few years we lived a fairly typical middle-class lifestyle. When Sylvia started primary school, I became chair of the School Committee. When she moved on to high school, I found myself chairman of the School Board. Lori was every inch an artist. With virtually no budget she almost made our modest home an art gallery. She had a knack of finding objet d’arts in the dusty corners of second-hand shop and wrangling them at rock bottom prices. Sylvia starting school freed up some time, and Lori successfully developed a home-based interior design business. She also loved cooking, and could somehow serve a restaurant-quality meal from the most mundane elements.

Everything came crashing down after 17 years. An undiagnosed aneurism flared, and despite the best and most urgent efforts of medical staff, she died suddenly. Sylvia and I maintained a non-stop vigil by her side for 18 hours, at the end of which she gasped, “love you”, and then passed on.

Needless to say, Sylvia and I were utterly devastated. A pillar of our family, our precious wife and mother, was ripped from us. We stumbled around for months, clinging to each other, barely able to maintain the basic necessities of life. If it had not been for friends and understanding work and school colleagues, Heaven knows how we would have survived. But grief has to give way to reality, and slowly we picked up the rag ends of our life, groping our way back to some new kind of normality.

Looking back, I realise that I was so inwardly focused I didn’t give Sylvia the support she needed. So she started looking in the wrong places for identity. She got involved with a bad crowd of young people from school, whose main aim in life was to avoid any sort of responsibility and to get wasted as often as possible. She started drinking, and where she had been a high-achieving pupil, began to slip backwards.

I don’t know where things might have ended up if it had not been for two people: Gareth, and the school’s Deputy Principal, Amanda Mitchell. Amanda is one of those people with an amazing ability to draw lost souls to herself, and she started drawing Sylvia in slowly. Not intruding, not lecturing, just being a substitute mother as much as was possible given the dynamics of the situation. Gareth, unbeknown to Sylvia or myself, had been smitten with her from the very first. At first it was worship from afar, lacking self-confidence and not believing that Sylvia could have any interest in someone like him. But as he saw her going downhill, he knew he couldn’t just stand by and not do something. The what tormented him.